Dublin man recycles used cigarette filters into new plastic products

Two years ago, Keep Columbus Beautiful volunteers were happy to spear, rake and remove about 62,000 cigarette butts from central Ohio highways.

Two years ago, Keep Columbus Beautiful volunteers were happy to spear, rake and remove about 62,000 cigarette butts from central Ohio highways.

The not-so-happy destination for 775 pounds of trash from the one-day cleanup effort was the Franklin County landfill, which has less and less room to spare.

More than 300 people will head back out Saturday for the second Kick Butt Columbus day, and this time, all those tossed-out filters will end up in a better place.

Blake Burich wants them all.

The Dublin resident has patented a way to recycle cigarette filters into car parts and products made out of recycled plastics. He mixes them with different solvents to create plastics that range from rigid to highly flexible.

It's still largely a part-time operation in which friends with chemical-engineering experience and other expertise are his partners. The website for their company, InnovaGreen Systems, asks smokers to keep and contribute their cigarette butts for research and development.

"I work on this thing from Saturday morning to Sunday night a lot of times," said Burich, 46, whose full-time job is in sales management. "We're a bunch of guys who want to do something to improve Mother Earth."

Right now, environmentalists say, she's choking on the most-littered item of all.

According to a 2009 study by Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts, packs and other tobacco products make up 38 percent of the nation's roadside litter. They're 30 percent of the litter outside buildings and other places where people can't smoke.

"People really do not think of it as litter," said Sherri Palmer, program manager for Keep Columbus Beautiful, which is part of city government. "What do you see? Right at the end of the (highway) ramps, people are emptying their ashtrays or flicking their cigarettes out the window."

Many think they're biodegradable, but cigarette filters are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate that takes years to break down.

The Keep America Beautiful study found that people are more likely to drop, flick or stomp out their cigarettes on the ground if they see butts and other litter already there.

"When people walk up to a building, they would never drop a can or a wrapper," said Pat Lynch, a landscape designer with Peabody Landscape Group, which helped start the cleanup effort through the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio.

Palmer said they'll pick up litter of all types, not just cigarette butts. Last year's highway-cleanup effort focused on wrappers and bags and other fast-food litter.

A cigarette flicked from a car in front of him gave Burich the idea to start experimenting with ways to turn trash into potential treasure. He started in 2004 and received his first utility patent in 2009.

He said he plans to use the latest batch of butts to create a sculpture for the city.

rvitale@dispatch.com

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